Introducing Microsoft Windows Server(TM) 2003

The Windows Server 2003 application environment improves the productivity of developers by providing a complete set of integrated application services and industry-leading tool support:

• Microsoft .NET Framework.

  The .NET Framework incorporates the common language runtime and a unified set of class libraries that include Windows Forms, Microsoft ADO.NET, and Microsoft ASP.NET.

  The .NET Framework provides a fully managed, protected, and feature-rich application execution environment; simplified development and deployment; and seamless integration with a wide variety of programming languages. By integrating the .NET Framework into the Windows Server 2003 application development environment, developers are freed from writing plumbing code and can instead focus their efforts on delivering real business value.

  The .NET Framework ”which Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 98, Windows Me, and Windows NT 4 all support ”lets developers create great Web applications with the help of ASP.NET and other technologies. It can also help them build the same applications they design and develop today. The .NET Framework provides deep cross-programming language integration that boosts productivity by enabling developers to extend one programming language's components within another language by way of cross-language inheritance, debugging, and error handling.

  Windows Server 2003 provides the richest set of services available with any development platform, including comprehensive data access, integrated security, interactive user interfaces, a mature component object model, transaction processing monitors , and world-class queuing.

• ASP.NET: simple Web service creation.

  Using the ASP.NET XML Web services features, developers can write their business logic, and the ASP.NET infrastructure will be responsible for delivering that service via SOAP and other public protocols.

• Separation of code from content.

  The .NET Framework enables developers and content creators to work in parallel by keeping content separate from application code.

• Industry-leading tools.

  Microsoft Visual Studio .NET provides an integrated multilanguage tool for building Web applications and XML Web services.

• Reusable code.

  ASP.NET provides an intelligent architecture that's easy to learn and that allows for improved code reuse.

• Automatic memory management.

  The .NET Framework runs in the common language runtime, which is a garbage-collected environment. Garbage collection frees applications that are using .NET Framework objects from the need to explicitly destroy those objects, reducing common programming errors dramatically.

• Server-side Web controls.

  The new ASP.NET functionality increases productivity by encapsulating complex interactions in server-side components. Developers can rapidly build scalable Web applications that can service multiple-user interface devices. Web controls are compiled and run on the server for maximum performance and can be inherited and extended for even more functionality.